Sardinian Warbler
Curruca melanocephala
Compact, robust, and big-headed warbler. Males are striking with a black hood contrasting with whitish throat, gray back, and red eyering. Females duller with a gray hood, white throat, and buff body. Common in many typical Mediterranean habitats including tall bushes, open woodlands, gardens, coastal scrub, and plantations; also in oases, acacia woodlands, and scrubby desert in non-breeding range. Usually first detected by its song, a fast, angry-sounding rattling "ctret-tret-tret-tret-tret" or "tetwtweer-tik-tik-tik" with whispering in between. The call is a dry "tseck."
Taxonomy
The Sardinian warbler was formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae. He placed it with the wagtails in the genus Motacilla and coined the binomial name Motacilla melanocephala. Gmelin based his entry on a description by the Italian zoologist Francesco Cetti in his book Gli uccelli di Sardegna (The Birds of Sardinia) that was published in 1776. This was the second volume of his Storia naturale di Sardegna. Cetti did not use scientific names for the species. When a translation of Cetti's three volumes were published in German, the translator, David Piesch, and the editor, Nathanael Gottfried Leske, included an Appendix at the end of the third volume (published in 1784) in which they proposed the binomial name Motacilla melanocephala, the identical name that was later adopted by Gmelin. In spite of this earlier publication, as of 2023 Gmelin is treated as the authority for the species.<p>The species was formerly placed in the genus Sylvia that was introduced in 1769 by the Italian naturalist Giovanni Antonio Scopoli. The genus name is from Modern Latin silvia, a woodland sprite, related to silva, a wood. The specific melanocephala is from Ancient Greek melas, "black", and kephale, "head". Currently, the Sardinian warbler is placed in the genus Curruca by the IOC, along with most of the species formerly classified in the genus Sylvia.<p>Together with Menetries's warbler the Sardinian warbler forms a superspecies. Both have white malar areas and light throats, and otherwise black heads in adult males, as well as a naked ring around the eye. The eastern subalpine warbler, which seems the superspecies' closest relative, has a dark throat and breast and a dark gray upper head in males, but otherwise shares these characters. These three species are related to a dark-throated superspecies consisting of Rüppell's warbler and the Cyprus warbler, which also share the white malar area with blackish above.<p>This bird may be considered a superspecies, divided into the western Curruca melanocephala and Curruca momus from the more arid regions of the Near East and adjacent Africa.<p>The geographical variation in the Sardinian warbler conforms to some extent with Gloger's rule, though not as strongly as in some other typical warblers. The validity of leucogastra and norissae is not accepted by some authors, and valverdei has been described very recently. On the other hand, leucogastra might be more than one subspecies.
- Scientific name
- Curruca melanocephala
- Authority
- (Gmelin, JF, 1789)
- Order
- Passeriformes
- Family
- Sylviidae
- Genus
- Curruca
Range and habitat
It breeds in the southernmost areas of Europe and just into Asia in Turkey and the eastern end of the Mediterranean. This small passerine bird, unlike most "warblers", is not particularly migratory, but some birds winter in North Africa, and it occurs as a vagrant well away from the breeding range, as far as Great Britain.
- Breeding range
- PAL : sw
- Non-breeding range
- n AF
- Migration
- Complete migrants
Behavior
This is a bird of open country and cultivation, with bushes for nesting. The nest is built in low shrub or brambles, and 3-6 eggs are laid. Like most "warblers", it is insectivorous, but will also take berries and other soft fruit.
Conservation
- Population trend
- rising
Photos
Distribution
Bird Calls
Other Birds
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